Gone
by Sierra of the Stars
Summary: "The wind has amused me that day as it staggered over the fells on drunken toes, belching hot summer air on Fangorn." After decades of slumber, a weary Ent wanders in search of his mother. One-shot for the Figment Summer Fanfiction Contest. Cover by Jennifer Mobley.


**Disclaimer**: I doesn't own nuttin. Tolkien is king.

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**Gone**

It is time, mm, yes. Time for a visit long overdue.

A frothy grey snow mantles the frostbitten earth like a thick coat of dust, lies in threadbare ribbons on the fraying moors, drapes on spindly boughs like filthy rags. Beneath it, the forest eaves seem shabby, brittle, and unfathomably old. Not since… Actually, mm, I do believe I have quite forgotten when last I wandered these lands. The world has grown a bit more tattered, a bit more barren and frail, during my slumber. I blink drowsily. With every sighing breath an all-consuming ache gnaws at my lethargic body with flat bovine jaws. One would think I had not awoken for a century! How long… No, best not to ask. Mm, don't be hasty, I might say.

I attempt to call up any memory of my mother. The scene, when at last it heeds my summons, is smudged and distant. That is understandable, after all. I was only an Enting at the time, a spritely little fellow with smooth peridot skin and no tolerance for long lectures. Even hasty. Yet it should not be this hard to remember, mm, no. It was not this hard before.

The wind had amused me that day as it staggered over the fells on drunken toes and belched hot summer air on Fangorn. I stumbled after it, up up up the dales, tripping on gangly legs and loosened stones. Skipping and leaping and drinking in the sweet nectar of the sun. I crested the ridge, peered over the precipice. And now reeled, fell back, rolled a ways down again the slope at the horror of the sight that awaited me there. Something. Something had come. Something had ravaged the trees, the lovely stately pines that blanketed that distant valley in a woolen green cloak, a softly rippling sea of molten emeralds, if such a thing could be. Gone. All gone. Gone, gone, gone. The mountainside bubbled with desecrated stumps as if they were warts marring the bulbous skin of some great rocky toad. Where the beautiful evergreens still stood they had been rendered unrecognizable, regal trunks slashed and splintered, gruesome jagged wounds scoring their flesh and oozing torrid bronze sap like ichor, like golden pus. The pines that I so loved, ruined, and the hills that had always offered me sanctuary in my roaming, a desolate waste. With a wailing sob I sank to my small knees- more limber in that bygone age was I- and shook my fist at the sky.

Gone.

It was then that my mother had ascended the heights and laid her knotted brown hand on my shoulder. "You see, little sprout," she had said, in a voice gentle and rumbling, "this is what comes of wilderness. Discord, fear, ruin. You see, though the others refuse, why the Entwives strive ever to tame the wood, to make it obedient and amiable and good. Where the wild lives, so live grief and shadow." She took me then in her long arms, gathered me up, and coddled me like a seedling, crooning a lullaby as ancient as the wood. As she sang of wind and stone and years that fluttered down with the drifting leaves, she bore me down and to the outskirts of the forest where the trees gave way to rolling dells, across the Great River, to her garden where a lingering spring was budding late in the cherry trees and the boughs drooped under the weight of ripening fruit. "Such evil will never touch the lands here," she assured me. "Here there will eternally be peace."

But I could not abide there in the tidy, cultivated hills. The distant murk of Fangorn beckoned relentlessly for me to join it, to walk under great branches yet untrimmed and taste true air that had not been tainted by the perfumes of meticulously tended flowers. I departed my mother's gardens, and never did I return.

I stride painfully, meanderingly, across the plains, toward the distant mutter and rush of the River, and to the dwelling place of the Entwives beyond. In my mind's eye I dream up intricate greetings and rambling apologies for her, and a plea that she come back with me to the sprawling forest where the Ents await them, unwilling to emerge but always yearning. Mm, but it is hard to think. I am weary, and limbs and thoughts are equally stiff.

Time for a visit, yes. Time to wake up.

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**Author's Note**: For those who haven't read The Two Towers, the Entwives vanished at the close of the Second Age, and their gardens became a charred and barren wasteland. It's strongly hinted that they were all annihilated by Sauron at the time of the Last Alliance, but the Ents continued to search for them through and beyond the events of the series, refusing to consider that the Entwives might truly be gone.

So yeah. That was actually addressed in the original ending, but due to word limit rules. I had to cut the story nearly in half, and that was one of the many chunks eliminated. One of the best, too. I'm still angsting about it.

Thanks for reading, and I can't tell you how much your feedback means to me! :D


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